Lobo Malo - Chapter 9 - Wolf and Bunny
ViewPoint Museum, Federal Triangle Sector
1437 EST
"Ma'am," said Lowell Ryckmen in a glacially firm voice, his MDR rock steady against his shoulder, "I'm going to need you to slowly raise your hands where I can see them, and keep them safely removed from any weapons."
Four days into a long range recon patrol, Ryckmen had been carefully making his way southeast towards the Capitol. Part of his patrol had been to get a better feel for the movements and supply lines of the True Sons. The other, and in Ryckmen's opinion more important, part was to get the lay of the land. What he remembered of D.C. before Green Poison ravaged the world no longer applied. He needed to learn what the District was like right now, and how better to get around in it.
With ISAC's initial restoration, periodic supply drops were occurring once more. In a perfect world, only Division agents in good standing could hope to open the supply containers. In the world Ryckmen and others like him lived in, no container was safe from brute force applications of crowbars and sledgehammers. ISAC had notified him of the supply drop right outside the ViewPoint Museum a little earlier. To Ryckmen's mind, the smart thing to do would be to secure the drop, then cache the gear back at the Division safe house set up underneath the headquarters of the IRS. He wasn't surprised he'd found another person trying to get into the containers, but he be damned before he let that gear fall into hostile hands.
As he studied the woman, her back fully towards him, Ryckmen noticed the watch on her wrist. Either she was a Division agent or somebody who'd scavenged the watch. Tapping his own watch, Ryckmen subvocalized, "ISAC, ID check on the SHD watch four meters in front of me. Pipe audio to earpiece."
"Division Agent Annika Bundmeister, Strategic Branch. Original duty assignment, Naval Air Station Pensacola as security detail for Chief of Naval Operations and Secretary of the Navy."
"Ma'am, would you mind giving me your name?"
The woman snorted, her honey blonde ponytail shaking a little. "I think you already asked ISAC," she said in a velvety mezzosoprano voice. "But since you're checking my bona fides, my name is Annika Bundmeister. I'm an agent with the Strategic Homeland Division. I'm with the Strategic Branch."
"Long way from Toledo, aren't you?" Ryckmen asked.
"It wasn't Toledo. I was originally sent to Pensacola." She looked over her shoulder, fixing Ryckmen with a basilisk gaze, her Prussian blue eyes colder than sea ice. "Now are you going to keep playing stupid security games or can I lower my hands?"
Ryckmen lowered the weapon, a crooked smile crossing his face as she lowered her hands and turned to face him. "Professional paranoia," he said. "And we definitely are in Indian country around here, so one cannot be too careful. Nevertheless, you are a long way from your area of responsibility."
Bundmeister nodded, a frown crossing her severely elegant face. "When ISAC went down, we weren't sure what was going on, but we figured at least one of us had to go check it out." She shrugged. "I drew the short straw."
Nodding, Ryckmen looked her over, eyes widening slightly. "Have you been tromping through the bush with just your sidearm?" he asked incredulously.
"Lost my rifle somewhere in northern Georgia. My shotgun's pump broke outside of Vicksburg. So, yeah, I've been getting real good with my sidearm."
"Impressive," said Ryckmen admiringly. Clearly, Bundmeister was no shrinking violet, and knew how to take care of herself out in the wilds. "Let's see if we can't get you resupplied." The two of them went over to the crates and let the sensor scan Ryckmen's watch. The crates offered up replacement equipment, including an AK-M with two hundred rounds of ammo in magazines and a SPAS-12 shotgun with fifty rounds in speedloaders. Ryckmen kept an eye on the perimeter as Bundmeister put on the new gear, amazed how much of her old equipment had held up over the journey. "Feeling better?" he asked as she finished adjusting the straps on her new backpack.
"Loads better," she replied. "Now, is there a quiet place we can talk? Anything you can tell me about the situation around here would be greatly appreciated."
Ryckmen guided her over to a nearby parking garage. The two of them squatted down in the manager's office as he gave her the high level overview of life in the District and the short version of the few victories they'd scored so far. For her part, Bundmeister listened quietly, asking questions only when she genuinely felt she needed to know more. Ryckmen was impressed. Whatever she'd done before Black Friday, it was clear to him she'd seen the elephant and knew her business very well.
After twenty minutes, Ryckmen offered her a bottle of water. "I'm going to check in with Manny, let him know you're here." He tapped his watch. "Lobo to Base, requesting direct contact with White House actual."
A few moments later, his watch chirped. "White House actual speaking. What's going on, Lobo?"
"Made a new friend. A Division agent who came all the way from Pensacola to see what happened with the blackout. I'm thinking about heading home so we can properly debrief her."
"Where are you right now?"
"Not far from the ViewPoint Museum. Been watching True Sons activity in and around the area."
"Wait one." There was a few minutes of silence, making Ryckmen wonder Ortega was up to. "Lobo, is your new friend in good shape?"
Frowning in thought, Ryckmen slowly replied, "I'd say she's combat capable. Certainly moreso now than when I first saw her."
"I've got a job for you. ViewPoint is being used by True Sons as a hub for propaganda and communications. I just talked with Odessa. She's getting a team put together right now, but I want you and your new friend to go in and secure the site. The Theater is closer to ViewPoint than Ridgeway's forces at the Capitol, so if we can snatch that place and hold it, it'll screw his plans all to hell."
"And undoubtedly help us," murmured Ryckmen. "Might even be able to get citywide comms coverage."
"Exactly. Ordinarily, I would have planned something a little more structured with Kelso and Odessa, but you're in the right place at the right time."
"Can you get Peace sent down here? I like my new friend and all, but I could use the extra hand."
"He's currently out on another job with Agent Tarvey. Picking up battery packs from an Odea warehouse. Vikram Malik asked for them, so Odessa and Kelso sent them out."
Ryckmen grunted. "All righty. We'll work with what we've got. Lobo, out." He looked over at Bundmeister. "No rest for the wicked, I'm afraid. You and I just got tasked with a strike mission."
"The museum over there?" she asked. Ryckmen nodded and Bundmeister gave him a wintry smile. "Brief me on the way in," she said as she chambered a round in the AK, then again in the SPAS.
The two agents moved towards the museum, weapons at the ready. A guard posted near a checkpoint entrance didn't notice them in time, falling to a round from Ryckmen's suppressed SVD. Moving quickly, they took up positions inside the checkpoint, Ryckmen starting to service targets at the opposite checkpoint. True Sons troops began to move in, only to find Bundmeister behind cover, protecting Ryckmen with short bursts from the AK. "Definitely need to clean this guy up when I get a minute," Bundmeister murmured as she changed magazines.
"All clear," said Ryckmen as he stood up.
As they moved inside, a chirp came from their watches. "Incoming transmission, hostile channel, standard U.S. Army encryption." A moment later, they were tapped into a True Sons conversation.
"Gate forces have been neutralized, Sarge. It must be the Division!"
"So, the Division thinks they can come in here? They don't know who they're dealing with. Go dark, then corner and kill."
"ISAC, voiceprint on hostiles?" asked Ryckmen as he moved through the small garage.
"Voiceprint cannot identify first speaker. Second speaker identified as U.S. Army National Guard Staff Sergeant Carl Wade."
"Check his 201. Any citations for valor?"
"No citations for valor listed in subject's personnel file."
Ryckmen came around a corner and fired twice, dropping two more True Sons. "Combat record?"
"No combat records found with regards to subject."
"Guy's a part-timer." Ryckmen put himself behind a column, closed his eyes, and counted to ten. "Probably did his two and two and never left the damned FOB." Opening his eyes, he watched Bundmeister eel her way forward behind a support column further forward. Leaning around the edge, she lined up a shot and fired a short burst, catching two guards with a minimal shifting of the muzzle. As professionally offended as he was with the enemy he faced, Ryckmen could still appreciate the skill of his new ally. Definitely not a part-timer. Though why she'd been assigned to the Strategic branch instead of Tactical was a mystery he wanted to solve.
Twenty minutes later, the pair were in a television production studio, one of the museum's permanent interactive exhibits. Ryckmen wasn't sure why the place had been guarded, but the number of guards suggested it was important to Wade. "I really wish I had Peace here," he grumbled as he looked at the laptop incongruously placed on a card table.
"Peace?" asked Bundmeister.
"Sorry. Paxton Gregory, an Analytics guy. Good troop for being an IT nerd. He'd be all over this in a heartbeat."
"You know him from before the blackout?"
"After. Long story." Ryckmen peered at the screen. "All right, ISAC. Walk me through establishing a connection." ISAC began to mutter instructions through Ryckmen's earpiece, and Ryckmen confirmed each instruction verbally before the next one was executed. Once the connection was established, ISAC took over, quickly analyzing the laptop and the software installed on it.
"All communications channels routed through existing infrastructure have been reset to default or placed under direct SHD control."
"Outstanding." Ryckmen tapped his watch. "Lobo to Base. True Sons are off the air for now. We're in the cleanup phase at this point. What's the twenty on that team from the Theater?"
"Still making their way over," replied Ortega. "I know he's not a priority target, but have you found Wade?"
"Negative. Lot of privates, specialists, and corporals. No part-time staff sergeants so far."
"Copy that. Clean that place out."
"Warning," intoned ISAC. "Electromagnetic interference detected. Range: twenty meters above current position."
"Our nodes are hardened, right?" Bundmeister asked, a concerned look flashing across her face.
"Hardened, yes, but not completely immune. Strong enough source gets too close, it'll shank any SHD tech we deploy. And any sort of broadcast equipment on the roof will likely be permanently destroyed if we don't shag it up there."
The pair ran up the stairs and over to the elevator, Ryckmen punching the button for the top floor. As the doors opened, Bundmeister took point. "Keep me covered," she said curtly as they ascended a flight of stairs and went on to the museum's rooftop lounge. Piles of furniture and other debris blocked off direct access to the bulk of the space, forming a corridor out on to a patio area. Just next to a planter, a fat cylinder roughly the size of a large coffee can sitting on a slim metal post made a rhythmic knocking sound. Bundmeister leveled her shotgun at the object and put three rounds into it, ending the knocking sound. She moved around the planter and back inside the lounge, hearing a similar sound behind another barricade. As she did that, Ryckmen scanned the patio, engaging incoming True Sons members and forcing them to take whatever cover was available. Another three shotgun rounds rang out from behind the barricade, followed almost immediately by four pistol rounds.
"Everything all right back there?" Ryckmen asked over the comm.
"Just dandy. Some guy just popped up from the stairs leading down right before I could start reloading." Bundmeister slammed fresh shot shells into the SPAS-12, then moved down the stairs, hearing the knocking sound once more. She fired twice, putting the device out of commission, then made her way up the patio stairs, putting single rounds into the backs of pinned down True Sons with near-lazy elegance. Grabbing another speedloader, Bundmeister refilled the shotgun's tube magazine just as a door opened up inside the lounge. A heavyset man in body armor and carrying a grenade launcher came out, firing a round towards Ryckmen and overshooting by a large margin.
Ryckmen moved, trying to find cover, hoping the grenadier wasn't going to be stupid enough to put himself inside the "soft kill" zone of one of his own grenades. Bundmeister, meanwhile, moved in, lean legs driving her forward as she flipped the shotgun in her hands and hammered the grenadier's midsection just below the edge of his armor vest. The True Son grenadier doubled over as the wind was knocked out of him, his hands dropping the grenade launcher as he coughed and heaved. Without hesitating, Bundmeister brought the muzzle of the shotgun up under the man's helmet chin strap and pulled the trigger. The helmet rocketed off the grenadier's head in a geyser of blood and brains, but Bundmeister paid it no mind, shouldering the shotgun and dispatching the few remaining True Sons who'd followed the grenadier out.
Once the shooting stopped, Bundmeister opened the grenadier's vest, revealing the nameplate on his left breast. "Scratch one part-time staff sergeant," she growled.
* * *
The White House
1826 EST
Gregory walked into the barracks area, surprised to see Ryckmen sitting at a laptop. "Nice to see you got back OK, Lowell," he said with a tired smile.
"Good to see you, too, Peace. Heard you had a little labor dispute."
"Yeah. God damn Vikram Malik. See if I ever use Odea tech again." Gregory plopped down into a chair. "Heard you made a new friend."
"Very impressive new friend. I was just going through her 201."
"Her what?"
"Her personnel file. Apparently, we can do that without having the Pentagon and SECDEF screaming like horses that just got gelded."
Gregory nodded. "Yeah, found that out myself just recently. Little scary, really."
"I'd rather have the information available than have to try and fight a system which for all practical purposes no longer exists," said Ryckmen with a Gallic shrug. "Anyhow, our new friend Annika is...formidable."
"How formidable?" Gregory asked with a faintly raised eyebrow.
"She makes me look like a piker," said Ryckmen flatly. "When I heard she was Strategic, I had visions of fobbits not knowing which way to aim their weapons, but seeing her in action was a salutary experience. Reading through her file, I'm not gonna lie, I feel a little intimidated and absolutely mystified. She's kind of a rare bird for the Division. Served in the Air Force, Pararescue. One Purple Heart, which is interesting. Three Bronze Stars, which creates a sense of kinship, since I picked up the same number during my own time in the sandbox. Three Silver Stars, which is a damned sight more interesting and a contributing factor to my sense of intimidation."
"What's the difference?"
"Put very simply, you have to sweat to get a Bronze Star, but you have to bleed to get the Silver. I have one Silver to my name, along with a couple of 'Forgot-To-Duck' Purple Hearts. Three of them, particularly for somebody whose job description involves highly dangerous activities often behind enemy lines, says that she not only did her job, she did it extremely well and under exceedingly adverse conditions. It's the third Silver which really puts the icing on the cake."
"What's so special about that one?" asked Gregory, his mind still trying to grapple with the idea of somebody who could make Lowell Ryckmen feel intimidated even a little bit.
"Two things. The first is the citation itself, a little vague, a little obfuscated, which to my mind spells either black ops work or somebody who's really tight with the officer in question. The second thing leads me to believe it is an award for some very murky business, because the officer writing the citation was the commanding officer at JSOC at the time." Ryckmen smiled thinly at Gregory. "And that particular officer had a well known and thoroughly established loathing of any Air Force personnel. So, if a guy who hates the flyboys with a pure and burning passion is writing up a citation for the third highest award for valor, she must have impressed the holy hell out of him."
Gregory nodded in agreement. "What'd she do after she got out of the Air Force?"
"According to her file, she was working as a smoke jumper out in Colorado. Worked on wildfires all over the Western U.S. Couple citations for bravery there as well, state governors and the occasional small town mayor. Shy and retiring, she is not."
"So what's got you mystified?"
Ryckmen shook his head. "Why she was put in Strategic instead of Tactical. I mean, I can sort of see the logic in getting yourself the meanest and nastiest guard dog you can lay your hands on, and she's done at least a little VIP protection during her time in the Air Force. Clearly not afraid to pull the trigger on a threat, and not afraid to get up close and personal about it. But it just seems like such a waste of her talents. She'd be so much more useful in the Tactical branch."
"Maybe so," shrugged Gregory, "but she's here now. And honestly, are you seeing a whole lot of staying inside the lines as far as the branches go?"
"Not really," Ryckmen admitted. "Honestly, there's so few of us around here right now, it's kinda moot."
"Any other interesting bits of data in the file?"
"Little pieces here and there. Her Tactical course scores are almost as good as mine with the exception of distance shooting. Not married, no kids. A note about a tattoo she's got. A lop-eared rabbit with a switchblade."
"Where is it?"
"Somewhere neither of us is likely to see it," Ryckmen smiled thinly. "Apparently, that tattoo inadvertently contributed to the nickname she earned at the Ranch. People took to calling her 'Bunny,' and she didn't do much to stop them." He shook his head. "Tell you one thing, Peace, I don't want to get on her bad side. The lady doesn't play around. I'm pretty sure I'd win in a sniper duel with her. But keep me well away from her when she's got a shotgun in her hands. Pretty sure I don't want to find out how well she handles a blade. I'm liable to lose some bits and pieces," he concluded with a shudder.
"Formidable, indeed," nodded Gregory, echoing Ryckmen's shudder.